Heart of the Swarm 3.0 Patch Notes

The Heart of the Swarm 3.0 Patch is now live! This patch brings a host of new additions and improvements to the game. Please read the full patch notes below.

General

“Whispers of Oblivion” now available

Three new campaign missions that were previously only available in the Legacy of the Void Beta are now available to all players.

To play these missions, click on Campaign and select Legacy of the Void > Prologue.

These missions focus on Zeratul and serve to bridge the story between Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void.

You can now purchase any of the three StarCraft II expansions in each of their respective in-game menus on the Campaign screen. This includes the ability to pre-purchase Legacy of the Void.

As a reminder, each expansion can now be purchased as a standalone product; you do not need to own previous installments in order to play subsequent ones.

A 64-bit version of StarCraft II is now available. To use the 64-bit client, navigate to Settings > Game Settings > StarCraft II in the Battle.net App.

StarCraft II installations have now been migrated from the old MPQ file format to the new CASC file format. For more information on CASC, see this blog post.

User Interface

The entire StarCraft II user interface has been completely revamped.

All major navigation has been moved to the top of the screen, including the Party Panel and Profile.

Custom Games have been moved under Multiplayer.

Archon Mode is now available in Custom Games on official Blizzard-authored maps.

In order for map makers to add Archon Mode support to non-Blizzard maps, simply open and re-save the map in the Patch 3.0 Editor in order to pick up the new Archon Mode variants, and then republish the map to Battle.net.

The WCS 2.2 Observer Interface now shows the first four letters of each players’ names for each Archon team.

Unit selection circles have been updated to better show which players are controlling which units when observing team and Archon Mode games.

Archon Matchmaking and the Archon Ranked Ladder (including Archon Grandmaster League) will become available for Legacy of the Void players upon its release.

The Search Panel/Countdown Timer has been moved from the top middle of the screen to the bottom left.

The Chat system has been completely redesigned.

Chat is now one persistent window in the bottom-right corner.

Players are now automatically joined into General Chat upon logging in.

Chat channels are now split into expandable/collapsible groupings on the right side of the Chat panel.

The chat window can be expanded in height and pinned so that it stays on the screen even when out of focus.

The maximum number of players in a chat channel has been increased from 100 to 200. Players who have been inactive for a set period of time will be removed from public chat channels.

Additional chat display and filtering options have been added to the Options Menu under Options > Social > Chat and Options > Social > Chat Channels.

You can now join chat channels by typing ‘/join [channelname]’. If a public channel or group channel exists, you’ll join that channel. Otherwise, you’ll join a custom chat channel.

Many other ‘slash commands’ have been added, type /help for a list of primary commands.

The following Gameplay options have been removed and are now permanently enabled:

Display World Object Tooltips

Display Game Tooltips

Display Hotkeys on Command Card

Enable Starting Worker Rally

Game Timer

In multiplayer games, the game timer now shows real time instead of scaling the time based on game speed.

Options > Gameplay > Display Build Grid is now enabled by default.

In Options > Graphics:

Background Model has been moved under Display.

Texture Quality has been moved under Graphics and the Textures dropdown has been removed.

A new tab has been added: Observer and Replay.

The Voice tab has been renamed to Voice Chat.

Replays

All replays are now saved automatically, and the “Save All Replays” option has been removed from the Options Menu.

The file size of each replay is now displayed in the Replays screen.

The in-game “Load Saved Game” dialogue now defaults to the Recent tab.

As a reminder, replays created prior to Patch 3.0 will no longer be viewable, but replays that are newly created in Patch 3.0 and onwards will continue to be supported in future versions of the game. See this blog post for more details.

Gameplay

The worker count text will now turn red if your vespene gas worker saturation is higher than recommended.

Slight adjustments have been made to flier separation when moving in groups so that flier units do not rapidly lose their velocity when attacking while moving.

If you issue a new attack command when Carrier Interceptors are already deployed, they will now engage the new target instead of returning back to the Carrier first.

Possible enemy locations will now pulse on the minimap for 10 seconds at the beginning of every game.

Pressing Alt + <number> creates a new control group and removes units from other control groups. This works in all team games, including Archon games.

This causes text edit controls which modify game text to underline unrecognized words.

Terrain Module

Multiple map texture sets

Multiple texture sets may be added to a map within Map > Map Texture Sets.

Each terrain chunk (8x8 area) may use only one of the map texture sets. Use the new Texture Sets brush in the Terrain layer to assign sets to chunks.

Within the Texture brush, choose which set to apply. Textures may only be applied to chunks which use the active set.

Mutually exclusive map tags (Map > Map Tags)

Map tags may enable a new option: Load Only One Tag In Game, along with a Load Chance. Only one tag using this flag will be randomly selected during game loading, and objects using the other tags will not be loaded.

View > Show Tags > Cycle Exclusive Tags

May be used to toggle editor visibility between each tag using this new option.

Vision brush added to the Terrain layer for painting vision blocking state directly on the map.

View > Show Vision settings for previewing vision state (AKA fog of war) based on all placed objects.

Fill operations added to Painted Pathing, Creep, and Vision brushes.

Fill operations may specify what state to Fill Within. Options include cliff level, texture, region, pathing, creep, and vision.

Edit > Paste Position Symmetrical

Use in conjunction with map symmetry and Copy Position. This will move the selected object to the nearest point which is symmetrical to the copied position.

Data > Rotate Objects

Opens a dialog for rotating a group of objects about an arbitrary point.

Sound Emitter points

Sound Actor property added for using an actor instead of a direct sound link.

Height property added for adjusting the height at which the sound plays.